"This is still early, early days for OS X 10.9, and Mavericks will likely change and shift much more before it's released this fall. It's clearly not going to be the total aesthetic overhaul iOS 7 is, though, and that's okay. It’s a simple, familiar operating system, even less of a change than Mountain Lion, just with nips and tucks and a whole lot fewer sheets of weirdly torn paper. It has its bugs, sure, but it's also corrected a number of bugs that somehow made it into the final version of Mountain Lion, and even at this early stage is impressively stable and fast. It's gotten rid of a lot of the design issues that plagued many Mountain Lion apps (except for Game Center, which is still hideous), in favor of a cleaner, softer look that is far easier on the eyes." Hard to complain, really.

I was under the impression that Apple really didn't give much of a damn about power users, in that it seems it's either their way or the highway when it comes to what kind of options you get. (Which in iOS, is basically none.)

OS X and iOS are two completely different animals. You get everything with OS X (FreeBSD/Darwin userland, full access to the CLI, ability to change any preference you want, etc). Most of the preference files are easily edited to change options the GUI doesn't allow you to change, and it's not bogged down with Windowsisms like the registry. It's a marked contrast to iOS, probably because OS X came about when Apple desperately needed to make a come back. Jobs couldn't afford to be unfriendly to any potential users. I'm sure Apple would just love to lock OS X down, but the top dogs there are smart enough to know that if they do that they will lose damn near every OS X user they have, save perhaps those who would need OS X to develop for iOS. I for one hope they don't try it, as I've not found another os that gets out of my way and fits my workflow the way OS X does.